Wez G from Shuffle is a house music DJ . Since 1995 Shuffle have brought underground dance music from South Wales to the world. Wesley is also a Liverpool fan and enjoys travel and culture, especially foreign languages.

Thursday, 30 April 2009

Beautiful Stranger is about that random woman you cross paths with in the street. The casual glance, the seductive smile, a breath of fresh air in an otherwise dull day. Soundtrack to your mystery encounter, 'Beautiful stranger' is melodic, progressive, has some lovely vocals, and finishes with some far out, imaginative guitars and chillout. The tempo of that glare, the heat of the moment, the passion of the parting... Float away into a fantasy of house music...

In February 1958, Che Guevara, a leading revolutionary in Cuba, set up Radio Rebelde, to help the cause of the July 26th movement. Led by Fidel Castro, this movement had been encamped in the hills of east Cuba, the Sierra Maestra, fighting a guerrilla war against the Cuban army forces of General Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban Dictator. This war had been waged since December 1956.

A small band of exiled Cubans had returned to the island under the leadership of Fidel Castro. They sailed from Mexico aboard the Granma. A young Argentinian doctor called Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, formed an integral part of this movement. ‘Che’ would eventually lead his own column in the march out of the Sierra Maestra to the Llano in the final offensive on government forces to seize control of the Cuban cities. In the new Cuban Revolutionary Government, Che would have leading roles. His literate mind and eloquence would make him the most famous revolutionary in the world. In his later job for the Cuban government he would address the United Nations as well as form a key member of the Communist ruling elite. He was to hold the position of Minister of Agriculture and he would also be the key Cuban contact in their relations with the Soviet Union, participating in particular heavily during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

This ‘face of the revolution’ was an idealistic thinker. He was an intellectual. A thinking man’s fighter. Che had been inspired to join the July 26th movement as a result of his motorcycle travels through Latin America where he witnessed the social struggle of the poor and felt directly the effects of US imperialism. In Guatemala, Che witnessed the CIA overthrow of the régime of Jacobo Arbenz. Che had realised the importance of the CIA’s clandestine radio operation in Guatemala. They had set up a station, La Voz de la Liberación, which broadcast propaganda. In Cuba, Batista had been utilising propaganda, manipulating the course of the war, falsely reporting casualties of the Rebels, and lying to the people in general. Censorship had been introduced and correct information was difficult to determine. Several journalists had visited the Rebel bases in the Sierra Maestra but this would not suffice for the anticipated revolution. At Che’s command post, Pata de la Mesa, some radio equipment arrived and the first broadcasts of Radio Rebelde were transmitted.Radio Rebelde was run on a short wave transmission. Its content consisted of latest combat news, music and spoken literature. It broadcast nightly and began with the Cuban national anthem and the 26th of July hymn. The station had a slogan "¡Aquí Radio Rebelde!" “(Here Radio Rebelde!”).There were a few teething problems and initially the broadcasts were not very powerful. However, the persistence of the idea meant that by the time of Batista’s fleeing of the country on January 1st 1959, which signified the end of the revolution, Radio Rebelde had achieved stability and had been having an impact. Capt. Luis Orlando Rodríguez was in charge of the intial broadcasts before a specialist, Carlos Franqui , arrived from Miami, United States, to become the movement's overall director of information.

On New Years Eve 1958 and on the morning of the first day of the New Year, Fidel Castro broadcast across Radio Rebelde, rejecting any prospect of the military staging a coup to oust Batista. He reported that Che’s forces had taken Santa Clara and called on the rebel forces to push onto Havana and Santiago. He called for a further general strike. The last words of revolutionary Radio Rebelde were "¡Revolución Sí, Golpe Militar No!" (Revolution Yes, Military coup No!). Hours later the government forces unconditionally surrendered and the revolution had, against all odds, succeeded.

The concept of realtime propaganda has changed the face of war and became an essential tool of modern warfare. Propaganda has always been an important factor, but without Radio Rebelde, the struggle of the July 26th movement would undoubtedly have been protracted.

Radio Rebelde is still running in Cuba today, broadcasting on FM to 98% of the island. Perhaps in this day and age, they would be using an internet broadcast. As yet, at Krykey, we are unaware of a revolutionary radio station on our network. But who knows about the future? Perhaps a twenty-first century Che will seize advantage of the broadcasting potential of internet radio, and reach out to the people to overthrow tyranny and evil?…

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

On April 15th 1989 Liverpool FC played an FA Cup Semi-Final fixture against Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday's ground, Hillsborough. A disaster occurred at the ground and 96 Liverpool fans were killed. As a Liverpool fan who was 11 years old at the time, I wasn't at the match, but watched at home on television. To watch your team go down playing football is one thing but to watch your supporters die at the match transcends any sport. It is horrific and Hillsborough is one of the greatest calamities in British history. Today is the twentieth anniversary of the disaster and like many people all over the world I will sadly be commemorating the tragedy. Twenty years on and families of the victims feel that they have not received justice. Justice for the 96 is an organisation at the heart of Liverpool football club. It is something I endorse and fully support.

I am a keen fan of Liverpool and have watched many games at stadia all over the world. With my Aston Villa supporting Uncle I was actually in the seated area of the Hillsborough stadium a couple of months before the disaster watching Aston Villa play Sheffield Wednesday. From direct personal experience I can say that it was an eerie place. I didn't feel safe going to the ground, walking through the streets of Sheffield and inside the stadium it didn't impress me much, certainly the look of those enclosed terraces to the left of where I sat did scare me.

At the time it was standard procedure due to the football violence problems in England, that fenced in pens were set up at football grounds. These pens kept supporters from invading the pitch. They were to tall to climb, especially with the way they angled back into the terraces. As a regular attender of rugby stadia I couldn't understand why the supporters had to be stopped from going on the pitch. At rugby games the most exciting part of the match as a young fan was when the final whistle blew and you could charge onto the pitch to get your favourite players' autographs. Football was a more sinister sport. Liverpool had been part of the Heysel Stadium disaster of 1985 where 39 people died, a clear demonstration of how dangerous a sport football can be.

At Hillsborough, even though Liverpool had a larger support than Nottingham Forest, they were allocated the smaller end of the stadium. The Leppings Lane end held 14600 in terraces whereas the Spion Kop end had a capacity of 21000. The design of the Leppings Lane end was poor and there had been a number of complaints by many fans about the facilities after they had been injured at previous matches. Liverpool had made an official complaint prior to the semi-final after their supporters were injured during their previous match against Sheffield Wednesday. On the day of the game there were unannounced roadworks on the M62 motorway which meant that many supporters were running late as they travelled over the Pennines from Merseyside.

A bottleneck developed outside the stadium as supporters hurried into the pens. Some people who had turned up without tickets on the offchance of getting some at the ground were being turned away but couldn't exit because of the masses who were trying to get through the turnstiles. The police sensed danger and anticipated that to get all the supporters with tickets inside the ground would take up till 3.40pm, 40 minutes after the scheduled kickoff. It was customary in this situation to delay the start of a match to protect public safety. Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, the police officer in charge of match security decided not to delay the kickoff and gave an order to open Gate C, where no turnstiles were present. He intended that this would allow people to exit from the crowd of 5000, building to a crush outside the stadium. Ten minutes before the start of the game and the players arrived on the pitch to great crowd cheering. The excited supporters outside the ground used gate C to go into the ground and they began to fill the two central pens via a tunnel.

As fans continued to pour into these fatal pens, which had a capacity of only 2000 at maximum, a crush began in the ground. About 3000 people were in the central pens. Those at the front were being crushed into the security gates. The fans at the back had no idea of the problems inside and no stewards were present to warn them off. The match kicked off on time. People began dying as they suffocated in the crush. The tight conditions at Leppings Lane led to many supporters dying standing up of compressive asphyxia. Supporters in the upper tier started lifting fans up from the mayhem below. Fans were attempting to escape the crush by climbing the fences. At 3.06 pm when it was clear that there was a serious incident, the police advised the referee to abandon the game.

The images that stick in my mind were of supporters clambering up the security fences in vain. They were designed to prevent supporters from getting onto the pitch and they sure did their job. People were short of breath and sweating. There were no metal cutting facilities at Hillsborough and no way of removing these security fences. A small gate was opened and people began to spill onto the pitch. At this stage, the police feared an incident with the Nottingham Forest supporters so rather than diverting their attention to the dying and injured Liverpool fans they concentrated efforts on creating a police cordon three-quarters the way up the pitch to prevent Liverpool fans from getting to the Spion Kop end. 44 ambulances turned up at the ground but all bar one were refused entry. Advertising boardings were used as stretchers to ferry the casualties. As they tried to get out to the waiting ambulances, police in the cordon forcibly turned them back. 92 Liverpool fans died on the day of the match. Four days later this toll had risen to 95. In 1993, having been in a coma for four years, the life support machine of Tony Bland was switched off, bringing the final death toll to 96. 766 other fans were injured, with 300 needing hospital treatment. The psychological toll was extreme on all present at the match, those affected families, Liverpool supporters worldwide, TV viewers and fans of sport in general, all were devastated by the disaster. It was the worst stadium incident in British history and one of the worst of all time in the world.

A government inquiry, headed by Lord Justice Taylor, filed the Taylor Report into the incident. This found that the official cause of the disaster was the failure of police control. An attempt was made to prosecute Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield and another officer on duty, Bernard Murray. Duckenfield initially disguised his decision to open Gate C and stated that it was the Liverpool fans who had forced this gate open when in fact he had given orders to open it. At the trial police officers controversially manipulated evidence. Duckenfield's doctor declared him medically unfit to stand trial and the prosecution thought it unfair to continue prosecuting Murray alone. Duckenfield took medical retirement on full police pension.

Football fans across the world united in their support for devastated Liverpool FC. One of the most poignant moments came in the European Cup semi final on April 19th, the Wednesday after Hillsborough. AC Milan played Real Madrid. Six minutes into the match the referee blew his whistle to stop the game for a minute's silence. The AC Milan supporters then broke into a rendition of Liverpool club anthem, 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. Celtic supporters were also very noticeable in their actions to commemorate the 96. The Liverpool club logo had two flames added either side of the Liverbird as a symbol to the brave dead who perished at Hillsborough. There are many memorials to the 96 dead, including one just adjacent to the Shankly gates at Liverpool's home, Anfield.

A quote, attributed to an unnamed policeman, claimed that "a dead girl had been abused" and that Liverpool fans "were openly urinating on us and the bodies of the dead".

These allegations caused the Sun newspaper to be boycotted by newsagents across Merseyside. The Sun's daily circulation in this area declined by 200000 to just 12000 copies sold a day. The allegations contradicted the reported behaviour of many Liverpool fans, who actively helped the security personnel to stretcher away a large number of victims and gave first aid to many injured.

The campaign to boycott the Sun still continues to this day and Liverpool supporters across the world are encourage not to financially support this vile rag, for using our dead as sensationalist material. Don't Buy the S** is as important an Andield motto as 'You'll never walk alone' or 'Justice for the 96'. I have sat in pubs at away games and watched an unknowing Liverpool fan stroll into the pub and plonk a copy of the Sun next to his pint. He was almost lynched on the spot. He didn't realise the significance of his actions. Manchester United and former Evertonian star, Wayne Rooney, caused massive offence on Merseyside when he published his life story exclusively in the Sun.

Twenty years on and it seems as though the families of Hillsborough victims will never receive true justice for their dead loved ones. There is a general consensus that they were wronged that fateful day. The finger can squarely be pointed to the authorities' actions causing the innocent death of many who were just trying to relax and enjoy their Saturday afternoon. Watching a football match is a fun pastime, one enjoyed by normal people across the world. Next time you are sat in a football ground, spare a thought for the 96. They were the same as you or I. They paid the ultimate price for supporting their team and will never be forgotten.

RIP the 96.I hope and pray you get justice one day.We remember you in our hearts.You will never walk alone....

Tuesday, 7 April 2009

Wintertime winds blow cold the seasonFallen in love, I'm hopin' to beWind is so cold, is that the reason?Keeping you warm, your hands touching me

Come with me dance, my dearWinter's so cold this yearYou are so warmMy wintertime love to be

Winter time winds blue and freezin'Comin' from northern storms in the seaLove has been lost, is that the reason?Trying desperately to be free

Come with me dance, my dearWinter's so cold this yearAnd you are so warmMy wintertime love to be

La, la, la, la

Come with me dance, my dearWinter's so cold this yearYou are so warmMy wintertime love to be[The Doors: Wintertime Love (from Waiting for the Sun album)]

Well - the long cold winter is finally over (unless you happen to be reading this in the southern hemisphere!). Vestal virgins are dancing around the sacred fire in preparations for an exciting summer of music festivals. In the UK at this time of year bands are extremely busy hounding festival promoters in order to fill up their summer calendars. The winter hibernation is over and the whole music industry comes to life. The Miami Winter Music conference has just finished and DJs and dance acts are groggily filling planes across the world, returning with their tales of mayhem, and the tracks which will be lacing the summer dancefloors from the Punta Del Este to the streets of San Antonio.

The creative spirit comes alive in spring, as flowers blossom and trees flood the countryside with green luminescence from their returning leaves. Like squirrels just run out of nuts, here at KryKey we are plaguing the landscape in search of new food to feast on as we bask in the sun's rays. At festivals across the globe there is a mad rush by emerging bands and artists to fill the bill in new stages. They need to showcase their music and gain new fans. We have decided to support these emerging artists and have opened the floor of four prime KryKey radio stations for this purpose. London Web Radio, Desert One, Oz Radio and DJ, are all seeking out music from artists to fill the airwaves. We believe that exposing new talent to the masses is a critical aspect of the music industry. Our growing radio network now has a significant impact on the music industry (there are now over 230 global KryKey radio stations) and we aim to use our new power responsibly. We realise that it isn't perhaps convenient for each individual band to set up their own PRS, so we aim to gather together those individuals and showcase their sounds on the KryKey network.

As we scour the social networks for interested parties, we have already struck gold with some excellent artists already submitting material. BenSem, Red Tempa, Lowkey aka Dolce, Viva la Resistance and Rowdee Methodz have all submitted some real quality music to us which is currently being blasted out across the KryKey universe.

If you are a band / DJ / artist, and would like your sounds exposed to a massive global audience, please email the relevant station address with your material in mp3 form, with a short 30s promo advertising your material (also in mp3 format). Here are the addresses:

If your area isn't included please just choose the radio station you feel most appropriate for your music and audience.

With your music supported by KryKey, we hope that you have a successful summer and manage to fully shake those wintertime blues as you head off to the best festivals and summer parties. Who knows? Maybe you can return to us with tales of your jaunts or maybe even record some live sets? One thing is for sure, we share your excitement for a bright future and hope that KryKey will be laying down the sounds of a great summer.

Monday, 6 April 2009

Last week the trial began of Comrade Duch, one of five former Khmer Rouge senior personnel to go before a special UN-led war crimes tribunal, investigating the atrocities that were committed in Cambodia during the 1970s. I have studied Cambodia in depth and find it a very interesting subject so I thought it opportune to include an article in the blog.

The ancient Angkor kingdom prospered much during the Middle Ages and leaves us remnants today of a magnificent Khmer civilization which was highly advanced and produced some of the greatest architecture ever known to our planet. The highlight of this culture can be seen in the magnificence of Angkor Wat which is one of the most architecturally precise monuments of all time and lies locked away in the Cambodian jungle.

During the 1970s, when the US was fighting the North Vietnamese, neighbouring Cambodia became involved in the conflict. As a result of Cambodian government policies at the time, the US were carpet bombing much of the country. The King of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, sided with the political opposition in an attempt to save his country from peril. With massive rural support the Khmer Rouge army, led by Pol Pot, entered the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh on 17th April 1975, and seized control of the state. What followed in Cambodia is one of the most startling incidents in human history and resulted in the deaths of approximately 2 million people out of a population of 7.3 million.

The Khmer Rouge were communists and had developed their political theories through the study of marxism in foreign universities. Most of the Khmer Rouge leadership had in fact studied in Paris, the capital of the former colonial masters of French IndoChina. Pol Pot, however, the regime's leader had remained in Cambodia where he had built up his armed forces to a position whereby they were able to seize power. The Khmer Rouge had developed a version of Marxism loosely based on that of Chairman Mao, who had successfully swept his Red Army into power in China in very recent memory. The Khmer Rouge declared Cambodia as the People's Republic of Kampuchea and set about instantly imposing their political ideals.

Under the guise of protecting the people from the ongoing carpet bombing by the Americans, the Khmer Rouge forcibly removed the entire population of Phnom Penh, and indeed the other major cities, into the countryside. Khmer communism was a warped brand of the Marxist philosophy. in Kampuchea there was to be no steady shift of class revolutions. Pol Pot envisaged an instant turn to full communism and in the vein of Mao before him set about devising an agrarian revolution akin to China's Great Leap Forward. The parasitic city dwellers would join their rural compatriots as peasants and through forced labour, the entire population would put its hand to tilling the soil. Kampuchea would become self-dependent and effectively the Khmer Rouge leadership sealed the borders, shut their country off from the rest of the world and proceeded with one of the most radical social experiments in history.

Dissenters and potential opponents of the new authorities were quickly and systematically removed. The first elements of society to feel the terror of Khmer Rouge 'smashing to bits' were the doctors and lawyers and other professional classes who were the first to fill the mass grave sites that would become a lasting legacy of Pol Pot's régime. The army would be the backbone of Khmer Rouge power and would brutalise the population in ways beyond belief.

The political theory held that strong force would initially be necessary to enforce the goals of the revolution. The land was quickly collectivised and people were set to work in communes, under the auspices of committees who would liase with the government forces. Traditions were abandonned, religion was abolished. New education measures meant that history began again at day 1. Everyone was to be reeducated with the new doctrines. Dissent was intolerable and amid the severe torture that was used there was widespread killing. Where the bullets of Khmer Rouge soldiers failed to penetrate, starvation through famine due to a failure of the agricultural policy, in particular the failure of adequate food distribution, ensued. An army of child soldiers arose, who were completely brainwashed with the ideology of the new régime and who were trained to inform on their own families and were conditioned to provide the brutal backbone of the Khmer Rouge system of terror.

Pure marxist theory excludes the position of supreme leader. In a communist society all are supposed to be equal. However, Pol Pot was a pure dictator. He applied the purges of the people to his own party. Although the army and government were clearly a priveleged class, they were not free from the terror perpetuated by the new system. In the abandonned Phnom Penh an interrogation centre and prison for internal dissidents was established. Tuol Sleng or S-21 was assigned to the command of Comrade Duch. He was provided with the full range of torture istruments with which to extract confessions from any suspected clients so that they could then be legitimately executed for their crimes against the state. It is estimated that Duch was individually responsible for the deaths of 14000 Tuol Sleng prisoners. A British journalist, Nic Dunlop, went out to Cambodia in the late nineties on a mission to find Duch and to investigate the inner workings of S-21. He managed to discover Duch, a new Christian convert, living on a false identity and working as a teacher in rural Cambodia. This discovery led to the great book that Dunlop wrote, 'The Lost Executioner' (see below) and also meant that Duch's cover was blown. He was handed over to the authorities to await a proper trial for his actions. That trial has now begun.

Not all under the Khmer Rouge was bad. Although famine was initially a problem, productivity in the collective farms did increase and certain factories in the cities were re-opened. In moves reminiscent of the Angkor empire, vast irrigation projects were undergone in an attempt to improve agricultural productivity. Cash was eliminated and a pure barter economy existed, with rice being the principal form of currency. Cambodia had achieved a certain independence from the imperial forces that had traditionally dominated the region. This was an aim of the régime and apart from the good relations it maintained with the People's Republic of China, Cambodia was purely independent. Little was known of what was actually occurring within the borders due to its pariah status.

Ethnic populations did suffer incredibly, in particular the Vietnamese minorities. Thais in the border regions, Muslims, Christians and Buddhist monks were also prone to experiencing the full force of the authorities' brutality. With the control of the native populations achieved, Pol Pot began to seek out futher Khmer Rouge goals. He dreamed of a wider state, a means of incorporating the Mekong delta, an expansive empire akin to the great Angkor one his predecessors had carved out in the jungles of southeast Asia.

Eventually, the urge for war became too much. Constantly readying the army and practising manouvres in constant border skirmishes eventually proved too much temptation to resist a full scale war with the hated Vietnamese neighbour. Pol Pot relied heavily on his Chinese ally aiding a Khmer Rouge assault on Soviet-supported Vietnam. Preceeded by an increasing dispatch of distraught Cambodian refugees to aid camps set up in border areas, eventually a full scale war with Vietnam saw the brutal terror of the Khmer Rouge brought to a close. In January 1979 Phnom Penh was liberated by the Vietnamese army and Cambodia became a subsidiary state of Vietnam for the next decade. Pol Pot and the remnants of the Khmer Rouge sought refuge on the borders of Thailand where they managed to maintain Khmer Rouge control until the late nineties when in 1998 Pol Pot died.

The international community began to writhe in guilt after the true scale of the Cambodian horrors emerged. The world was a silent witness to some of the harshest breaches of human rights that man's warped mind has ever produced. Pol Pot dies without ever standing trial for his actions. Some of the perpetuators now face justice. in the dock alongside Comrade Duch, stand Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan. Having read the book about Duch, I feel a certain sympathy for him. As he has clearly stated at his trial, he was merely following the orders of his superiors. He had no real choice about his actions as he would have simply been 'smashed to bits' himself. However, in light of the terror he must have committed, his very humanity must be called into question.

The Khmer Rouge make an interesting tale as it is a tale of extremes. We focus now on the brutality of the régime and seek evidence of the full scale of horrors that emerged during the existence of the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. It is easy to condemn the movement. However, in studying it, I can see a mirror image, an image of beauty. We take our lives and our modern societies for granted. The leaders of the Khmer Rouge were empassioned by a vision which does not run parallel to that of common international ideas. They wanted to reject the status quo entirely, to create a better future for their country. They set about abandonning modernity for perhaps a neolithic alternative. I think that in some ways by putting the people back on the land they were very right. Are people in cities parasites? In the countryside man becomes closer to nature. In the modern world we are so far removed from nature that we have forgotten what it actually is. Perhaps the global problems of climate change would evaporate if there was a worldwide movement back to our rural hinterlands? The Khmer Rouge at the very least had the conviction to put their theories into practise. All revolutions experience bloodshed. At what point does the flow of blood become successful? To sacrifice for the common good is a noble quality. I think that not everything went to plan, however. Nature itself is very brutal, nowhere moreso in the deprived imaginations of men, especially when they are armed and have no resistance. To lose over a quarter of the population to mass graves and skull mountains must signify a failure of the overall Khmer Rouge movement. I would have been intrigued to see, however, what would have occurred with absolutely no international pressures on Kampuchea. I didn't mention it in the article but there was US involvment in them dropping chemicals on Cambodian farmland. The region was overly susceptible to foreign involvment and the situation with the Vietnamese was a constant threat. In the end China didn't provide the anticipated support that Pol Pot envisaged which ultimately led to the collapse of the Khmer Rouge.

In today's world we see other countries embark on paths not dissimilar to that of Cambodia during the 1970s. Colombia, North Korea and Afghanistan are cases all well worth examining. In analysing a failed state we can perhaps learn more about the world we live in. Cambodia has some harsh lessons to teach and we owe it to the people who suffered and died in Cambodia that we gain an understanding of their situation so that such atrocities will never occur again.

If this article has interested you then you may wish to study the topic further. There is a great film called 'The Killing Fields', the aforementionned book 'The Lost Executioner' plus a biography of 'Pol Pot' by Philip Short, which are all excellent sources of reference and can be easily purchased at Amazon using the links below.

Friday, 3 April 2009

This mix takes you on a ride across a tribal plain. It's like you are traversing the Steppes on a flying horse, a stomping course of deep and funky beats, a journey through house finishing with some wild Arabic grooves. Saddle up and enjoy!